Ars gets its hands on the Optimus Maximus, begins payment plan

How do you get people interested in a $1,500 keyboard? Simple, turn each key into an OLED screen. When you hit caps lock, the keys change to show they're upper case. Play a first-person shooter and the WASD keys turn into arrows. The Optimus Maximus keyboard brought this audacious idea to life, although since it was first shown in 2005 the hardware has gone through many delays. So many delays, in fact, that Art. Lebedev was accused of promoting "vaporware" up until the price was announced, at which point there was a whole new set of sticker-shock-induced complaints.

At CES this year we stopped by Art. Lebedev Studio's booth at CES to put our fingers on the home row of the Maximus, and it is definitely a stunning piece of hardware when seen in person. The screens are bright and easy to read, although the buttons press down around the screens themselves so that the images never move up and down, something that felt odd at first. Also, the keys are slightly larger than you may be used to (unlike some other hardware that we've looked at), so it took me a few tries to type a sentence without any mistakes.

One question I had for Art. Lebedev concerned the durability of the screens. I'm a bad abuser of keyboards; I often eat at my desk, so turning a keyboard upside down after I've used it for a month or so would probably disgust most people. So what happens if you damage a key and blow out the the tiny screen? Simple, I'm told. Replacement keys can be ordered online for $10 each. In fact, the lowest-priced configuration for the keyboard is only $462, and comes with one OLED screen in the keyboard, inside the space bar. Other configurations with differing numbers of OLED screens are available below the full-priced 113-screen configuration, so you can, in essence, order the base keyboard and add a few screens every paycheck.

"It's like a payment plan," I say, as Audrey Dyakov, the general manager of Lebedev, removes a key and replaces it with a little plastic tool. "Exactly!" he tells me, nodding vigorously. It's an odd idea, buying a keyboard with such large keys and adding ten or fifteen OLED screens every few weeks until you have a full keyboard. One can imagine the excitement of finally putting that backspace key in, completing the collection. Is hitting a button with an Ars Technica logo on it to get directly to this site worth $1,500? Probably not, but if you've already sprung for the keyboard it's definitely worth the extra $10, no matter what configuration you settle on.

Even though the ship date has been pushed back to some time in the second half of February, it's nice to know there is a real, working model out there. Time to start saving your pennies.